Elton John to Write Book on the AIDS Epidemic

By Kellee TerrellFrom TheBody

January 11, 2012

Award-winning musician and long-time HIV/AIDS activist Sir Elton John has announced that he will release a personal memoir this year. The book, Love is the Cure: Ending the Global AIDS Epidemic, will be on store shelves this July, just in time for the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., this summer.

In a statement released on Monday, publishers Hodder & Stoughton promised a "very personal story of ... Elton's life during the AIDS epidemic, including his agony at seeing friend after friend perish needlessly."

Among the individuals it describes are [Freddie] Mercury and Ryan White, an American boy who became a "poster child" for HIV/AIDS after he was banned by a school because of his condition.

According to reports at the time, John was with White when he died in a U.S. hospital in 1990 aged 18.

"This is a disease that must be cured not by a miraculous vaccine, but by changing hearts and minds, and through a collective effort to break down social barriers and to build bridges of compassion," John said.

"Why are we not doing more? This is a question I have thought deeply about, and wish to answer -- and to help change -- by writing this book."

John wasn't always the tenacious HIV/AIDS activist that he has been the past 20 years. Last year, he admitted on the CNN special "Hope Survives: Thirty Years of AIDS" that he did nothing when the epidemic first hit, despite losing 80 friends to the disease. He said, "I was frightened. I was scared. I turned my back. I should have been out there with Larry Kramer."

All of the proceeds from John's book will go to charity.

Kellee Terrell is the former news editor for TheBody.com and TheBodyPRO.com.

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